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We bought a 1920s farmhouse that, at the time was a silly layout with 1 bed, 1 bath and stairs up the middle to an unused, open upstairs. We had it cut in half, moved 20 miles down the road to our property, and then spent about 8 months making it into a fantastic 3 bed/2.5 bath home with 2 living areas :-)

Carpeting can be pulled up.
Panelling can be painted over.
Non-loadbearing walls can be torn down.
Heck?! Even supporting walls can come down if they are headed.

If the layout of the house is even workable & the main systems are in good shape then:GoForIt!

I took 2 teeny bedrooms at the end of a hallway - one had a micro-bath w/sink & toilet - & combined them into a MBR suite with a walkin closet & steamshower (former eeny-beany closet).
Also removed diarrhea-yellow shag and obsolete linoleum and replaced with Pergo.

It's a cool house and a 2 acre beautiful lot. Not enough land for horses but in the horsey part of town.

The exterior and major mechanical systems have been very well maintained. Just the cosmetic stuff needs doing. It is a big house so the amount of paneling and gross carpet is overwhelming! I think paint and carpet alone would go a long way.... If the interior were updated it would well be worth quite a bit more than what it is being sold for.

Sorry about that I will have to upload them to picture trail for you then, I guess the public links on FB don't last long or something.

Personally I get overwhelmed with renovations of the house, because I don't have any spare time with horse and child care and a very demanding full time job. But my husband has no other hobbies, so he loves to "tinker". He pulled up the tile floors and put in laminate in most of the house, put in crown molding and interesting molding around the windows and doorways in the house, doubled the size of the kitchen, and now the main bathroom.

I won't get into the hell of the additions on the house from 4 years ago, when we doubled the size of the house to make living quarters for my in-laws, and to create office space for my DH and me, we both work from home. Nothing more nerve wracking then living in a house during major, major construction projects.

There are friends and faces that may be forgotten, but there are horses that never will be. - Andy Adams

Sounds like you've had a lot of work going on around you, I'm sure it helps that hubby is talented in the home reno department. My husband can do basic stuff... but tends to be a bit of a bull in a china shop! In our last house, the shower door skipped off the track one day. I asked him to stick it back on and 20 minutes later he'd ripped the entire shower door and frame off the wall and shower........

We drove by it again tonight. I'm torn. I'd love to be able to finance enough $ to make some of the renovations, will have to talk to our mortgage consultant about that. With the banks the way they are these days not sure that is doable.

After my house fire (not the entire house of course) they removed the living room paneling and put up drywall, got rid of the popcorn ceiling after using screws to reattach the ceiling panels (older houses have nails-not a good thing), and all interior doors and trim were replaced and painted high gloss white. The result is a very updated house that is for sale because of a job transfer (a good one too) that is very modern. And use flat latex paint for all walls including the kitchen and baths--the current latex paint is very washable and flat doesn't show the boo-boos very much. And if the kitchen cabinets are solid wood but unattractive you can sand and paint the frames and either beadboard the doors like some on here did (Misty Blue I think?) and paint it all chocolate brown, or you can paint the base cabinet frames, and get new doors and drawer front (or entire drawers if necessary) and it is less than half the price of new cabinets, and since you do it yourself is very affordable (install is usually almost as much as the cabinets themselves) and your kitchen won't be out of commission for a long time. If you paint I would get a pro to do it-the spray finish on the doors is excellent and hard to duplicate unless you are really experienced.

I love projects and keep getting sucked into looking at these houses that need lots of renovations...... unfortunately as much as I love projects I also like to go at them full steam ahead, whereas hubby says "oh we can do it all over the next 10 years..." Uh NO I want it all done NOW! lol.

I redid my 1900ish farmhouse. Bought for 15k. When I got the house, fortunately I was still living at home with mom. I bought it in I believe 2000. Didn't live in it till 3 years later (and it still wasn't finished....but are they ever?!).

I can tell you I would never want to tackle another project of this size on my own again. I now have a DH to help with those decisions! At my age at the time (21-22), I didn't exactly have life experience to help me out with! I was very hands off, cause I really had no idea what was necessary. My boyfriend at the times dad was an electrician, so he was kind of nominated as 'project manager'. Hired this dumb*ss plumber who randomly cut holes all over for ductwork.

Anywho, completely redid the entire house. Pulled all the walls down. Redid electric, plumbing, duct work, etc, etc. The house was vacant for 15 years prior to me getting it. There were many a teenage party in here... And squirrels living in the walls!

I'm right with you on I want it done NOW! But DH always says, 'You know Rome wasn't built in a day, right?'

The rooms are small, and had no closets. Although the bathroom was strangely cut up and had like 3 closets...very haphazardly done. I took all the closets out, and added one linen closet. The bathroom is soooooo big, it echoes! There is room in there for a jacuzzi tub and a separate stand up shower.

I made some booboos in outlet locations, and no phone jack in the living room...DUH. And of course not a floor is level and not a room square in the place.

Oh, and I think I took out a total of 4 mortgages. Starting at 25k, and kept right on going...

I unfortunately took NO pics. There were also over 100 cars parked on the .8 acre lot that had to be pulled out with the help of my dad and his tractors!

I dont' have pictures to upload, but
Our house was buildt in 1926 by the grandfather of the woman across the street. It appeared to have originally have cellar foundation made from the rocks he dug out of the ground. There were two little rooms in front, a kitchen with vinyl over the pine floor, and a dining room. Upstairs was one bathroom and three little bedrooms and no closets. When we bought in 1973, there was a little cinderblock room added to the the kitchen, with rusty tin cabinets. The two little rooms were made into one long front room. House still had bad wiring and original windows, many broken.
Since then, we have replaced all plumbing, wiring, windows,siding, and some roofing. We took off the cinderblock kitchen put in a real kitchen and family room, and a downstairs full bath. That was 23 years ago and they both need redoing now. Then in 1996 we added a second floor about the kitchen and family room, with a cathdral ceiling bedroom and bath with Jacuzzi.

The worst was the cosmetics that drove me crazy. The woman who lived here wa named Green, she had TB's and her racing colors were green and green. EVERYTHING in the entire house and barn was painted various shades of green, the only bathroom was tiled in green with mildewed grout. My family thought I was nuts nuts nuts. But it backed against state park and my DH had more optimism than I.

Come over and see my before and after pics. I can't figure out how to scan and ost them. Just think green.

Make sure you get a thorough inspection. We downsized & bought in country 5 yrs ago. Also, either look at a survey or go to county & look at map of property. In our case, house needed alot more than cosmetics (which we were told) and property was smaller than we were told. Owner got confused/forgot

I don't have access to attach pics right now, but my husband has spent the last 7 years renovating our little 1860's farmhouse. It hadn't been touched since it's last remodel in the 50s. It is now a lovely little house, and it smells MUCH better . When people ask us why we sold the spacious modern house and moved into the little money pit in the woods, we just invite them in. This house has Soul.

I agree that if it's just interior cosmetic work that needs to be done, it's not such a big deal. You would be amazed at the difference you can make by pulling out icky old carpet and putting a modern, neutral color on the walls. And all of that is weekend-project type stuff, not major reno. If you are at all handy, you can do it pretty inexpensively, too... paint is cheap! And in older houses, the rooms tend to be modestly sized, which means you can often buy carpet remnants that are large enough to get the whole room done very inexpensively, even with pretty high end carpet.

I've spent the last few years renovating a similar house - it's an 1890's farmhouse that we bought after most of the heavy lifting was done, but it still needed quite a bit of cosmetic work on the interior. I did 90% of the reno myself on nights and weekends, so it took much longer than if I'd hired it out, but it was also *very* inexpensive.

My last project was re-doing the downstairs half bath, which started out looking pretty bad - they had installed a tiny, industrial looking sink directly to the wall, with exposed plumbing like you'd see in a warehouse restroom or something... lino on the floor, dirty off white walls, etc. I painted, put in a gorgeous slate floor, installed some crown moulding, and replaced the industrial sink with a vessel bowl atop a really pretty vanity that hid the plumbing (and looks like a piece of furniture.) I did pay my electrician to run some electrical above the sink so I could add a vanity light, and hung a decorative mirror underneath. Now it looks like something out of a magazine and we get tons of compliments on it - all at a cost under $700.